Credit practices had a central role in the economic development of the Hispanic American Ancien Regime societies, even where banking institutions had not yet developed. Indeed, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Buenos Aires managed to emerge and consolidate itself on the basis of an economy supported by credit.
A diversity of instruments, institutions and actors gave rise to a heterogeneity of credit practices, displayed both in local daily exchanges as well as in the interregional redistribution of Atlantic imports. In the latter, the notaries of Buenos Aires were key actors, since they were not only legal intermediaries but also financial brokers: an intermediation supported by the ability of notaries to access information more efficiently than the parties involved in the credit contracts.
This lecture therefore proposes a brief overview of those credit mechanisms that took place in Buenos Aires throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the aim of understanding the role that notarial intermediation played in this complex credit network.
Languages: Spanish, English
The lecture will be delivered in Spanish